Real-time memoir of the coming year (5/20/14 – 15) and the achievement of a life-long dream

Archive for the tag “Movies”

Door knobs burn in my hand as I turn them, so I leave the inside ones open. Even the floor burns the bottoms of my feet, so: shoes, but they burn also. These words too, all words, whether I think or say or read them, they all burn now. Sometimes./

To hear them, these ones here, spoken aloud in this room today — w/ no one aside from me listening, no music playing, nothing baking — to hear them without burning, what I would give for that! To be back there, here but back then, in my dream of life again, where it was plenty warm enough, what I would give./

There were times I’d think I must have come from there to here through someplace really cold. I’d think, could I have died that day? That day I “wakened” to the smell of all my pies burning and you knocking as loud as you could on the door. “What’s burning? Are you okay? What’s going on with your hair?”/

We threw the pies into the garden, laughing. You cut my hair in the kitchen to help fix me back up as we aired the place out. “What happened, though? Did you fall asleep? Since when do you bake pies and for what?” I opened you some wine and we spent the rest of the day together./

But I watched the pies slowly disappear alone. It took weeks and then one downpour finally carried the rest away./

Today, I know I came through someplace really cold to get here. Why else, how else, could touching these now — these plastic keys — burn me so? So that the plainest words/thoughts, uttered as plainly as I can manage, are birds barely escaping a flame and then at the very last second returning or just stopping, letting it happen, letting it wrap them and hold them in its hot hands until they turn to ash?/

There is always “burn” here, but I’ve begun to wonder if it might be okay for a time./

After all, crying now is like climbing a tree—but on another planet. Crying: Why? How? It doesn’t happen here, I don’t think, but I’m not completely sure (having learned about evaporation so long ago). I do know it’s not okay not to cry ever./

I know too that today nothing is baking, no music is playing, and no one knocks or doesn’t knock at the door. And I know I didn’t die that day. I am being still and quiet, no more words aloud for now, dreaming of when I was “just warm enough” and wishing I could cry, here or on some other planet, any planet (except Mercury, Venus)./

And yet. Even though these words, my memories, the door, the floor, the bottoms of me feet — ALL of it burns, all of it is burning me — I begin to think it could all turn out all right, that one day I will be just warm enough again.

***

THIS is a repost, thanks. I’ve been gone from here for SIX long months. I consider it a bit of providence that I log back in tonight, after several days (weeks? months?) of thinking about this blog AND THIS POEM especially, and find that BURN is the one-word daily prompt. Today. When I log back in … But so, I have nothing new here now, I don’t think, am exhausted, but I jump back in to this — everything — holding the hand of my 47-year-old self from two years ago. I trust no one more.

I’d be more warm and content in bed, spooning with my friend.
This scene’s familiar, same time … and same channel again:
I’ve left the arms and warmth for the company of my pen.

It feels different from the time before — this time I think I’m OK. For a change, it’s not deprivation that’s got me up and awake, Though I know I’m no good and happy’s not my forte. And I haven’t felt like this in so long, I’d like to think … , but I hate to say:

You don’t want it tomorrow, if you’ve got it today.
Tomorrow never happens anyway — that’s what it is.

If you know me at all, you know I’m at home and at ease with my pain,
These exciting giddy moments, well, they’re hell to explain.
And I know that at any second the whole situation might up and change.
Are you telling me loves songs are only good after love’s estranged?

In the morning, he might leave for good without a goodbye.
And when heartache rears her ugly head, well I’ll look her in the eye,
And I’ll kiss her on the mouth. You know I’ll hold my head up high,
Bless her outweighed pain this time and I’m proud that she did not pass me by.

You don’t want it tomorrow, if you’ve got it today.
Tomorrow never happens anyway — that’s what it is, that’s what it is, that’s what it is.

If these words (*so dear to my heart, but which I’m not 100% sure about) do anything for you, check out the singer-songwriter behind them: Benjamin Smoke, of Cabbagetown in Atlanta, Georgia. This video for the song features footage from the exquisite documentary (directed by Peter Sillen and Jem Cohen), covering ten years of Smoke’s various incarnations and a remarkable life cut short by disease and addiction.

Cannot recommend the (whole) film enough. If you come away from it feeling sad (or worse), sorry, but I’d say you’ve missed the marvel and miracle that were this man’s talent, spirit, and character. The main thing I came away with was AWE for his lack of bitterness, especially given his situation, and sheer adoration for his music and his astonishing capacity for looking heartache (and himself and life and all of it) “in the eye” and being willing and able to share what he saw so beautifully and powerfully.

Also, and I always come back to this: even though beautiful ideas are … beautiful, a million of them don’t come close to: even one beautiful thing DONE/completed and dispatched to wherever it needs to go to best keep doing, or even one (non-harmful) deed whose aim is beauty, truth, good — or even any of those plain, mundane, easy-to-miss steps (or mis-steps) and choices that make such accomplishments possible.

Here, here for the Doers! (And for me, having realized that being busy-busy-busy-BUSY doesn’t make me one of them.) Slowly but pretty surely, I am joining you.

From A Town Called Panic (“Panique au village,” original title), 2009, by Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar

Terrible things happen all the time in A Town Called Panic, a great “kids'” movie. The characters make disastrous mistakes on a routine basis, so that the Belgian equivalent of “uh oh” is uttered by one or another of them approximately every 6 to 8 minutes. And yet Horse, Indian, Cowboy, and all the rest remain gleefully open to good times and the possibility/probability that all will turn out well after all.

Anyway, this day was riddled with frenzied comings and goings, minor mis-haps, major miscalculations — all in all, a pretty typical day. Oh, and I did no real writing (outside of this), so I feel pretty much like usual myself at the moment, have not been instantly edified or magically transformed by blogging, and am not gleefully open to much. But it’s only Day 2.

Must definitely try harder to “tidy [my] waffles” (quote from the movie) and keep on keeping on.